The practice of art is an organised anomaly. It is disciplined in language. Other than this there is only chit-chat about “creativity”. The work of Paolo Monti has constantly revolved around this evidence and this awareness, through the filter (and code) of an instrumentation that ranges from the most prosaic manuability to the most sophisticated scientific-technological apparatus. Perhaps it is because of this that he appears as the catalysing fulcrum (or disperser?) of a series of references, fundamental problems and questions that are divided into two distinct, but tightly interconnected, conceptual and operative routes.

On one hand his work with money, and consequently the fetichism of Value: desire not of the object, but of desire itself. A vertigo of the most complete abstraction, of the most disincarnate virtuality whilst at the same time being the most factually operative possible, with the theoretic-conceptual route traceable from Marx to Simmel.

On the other hand, his work that most explicitly adheres to scientific-epistemological procedures, concentrating on a hyper-technological dimension and fundamentally radicated in the principles of sensitive perception - and in the interrogatives raised by this - around the relationship between subject and object; identity and alterity (otherness).

A point must be made before exploring in detail these two poetic and operative paths. The work of Paolo Monti certainly gives, offering the “marvellous”, the thaumazein (hyper) technological ~ at various levels of power and seduction ~ but undoubtedly, it gives. In fact, technological processes (based on physics or chemistry) are simply shown without any particularly intrusive elaboration on the part of the artist. Monti is not in search of the “imaginative”, “aesthetic” side of Technique; nor does he possess the pathetic ideological pretension of humanistically redeeming Technique through “poetry” or “creativity”. Here, technology is utilised in a way in which it autonomously and spontaneously produces it’s own thaumazein. But for this to occur, we must - with Duchampian memory - “put it into place”. And this, only an artist can do.

A whole avenue of Paolo Monti’s art therefore takes money, both conceptually and materially, for the object of his work; figure of the very same together with the Other: vertigo of Value, mythology of the Myth. But which are the elements put into play? Gold is excluded from all other goods in order to become the general equivalent. Goods expelled by others become universally coveted.

The forsaken rules, the discarded commands. Why measure; because it gives value to Value. What is the price expressed in a paper banknote if not that of imagined gold? So, in Balance (8) a work from 1989, the very slow destruction of banknotes attacked by chemical reagents, is accompanied, in proportional progression, by the descent of a gold weight of corresponding value into an ampoule of mercury. One can understand how many images and forces of mythical nature are here mobilised.

The procedures of juridical-institutional character are those which Monti puts into play when he cuts a banknote along its entire perimeter (4) and then puts it back into circulation, working in this way along the lines of an all conventional definition of a money-marker. It would have been a different matter obviously, had he altered the recognisance indicators of the banknote, but he infact stops five millimetres before the Numerals above the Icon. That which induces consumption, is itself consumed; corroded by acid solutions, or through a patient manual rubbing (6) that seems to symbolically contract the passage of time of the banknote from one hand to another, during its normal circulation.

Paolo Monti confronts himself with one of the mythical figures of all time, and of our age in particular, using homeopathic logic: he consumes that which is permitted, annihilates that which is already a phantom, de-realises that which is already virtual.

According to a project that has to date encountered intuitable realisation problems, an armoured truck should transport two or three billion liras worth of banknotes in cash (2), to an exhibition site. The armoured escort would then simply, in “Duchampian” manner, place the contents of the cases on the ground, forming a regular parallelepiped with the bundles of banknotes, leaving them exposed (whilst under strict surveillance) for a determined length of time. Exhibition : epiphany of pure Value, absolute coincidence of reality (the concreteness present in the banknotes) and phantom (all goods and services both material and immaterial -bodies, diamonds, information- purchasable with that sum).

The idea of pureness is also present in Automatic Teller (7) 1990, where the optical reader selects the images that are proposed on the basis of the only icon that is memorised in its programme. If the banknote is imperfect, it is refused and returned; the interaction with the observer (who in this case undertakes a precise action) is machine dominated. We are therefore confronted with the technological (theological?) incarnation of the pureness of money-value, that recognises only the identity with itself through the exclusion of the other. One can purchase all the different goods, but on the condition of always exchanging them with the same sign. On the other hand the image, memorised by the machine, is the very performance of the Image; principle of repeatability, ecstasy of the Identical. Monti knows that every game has its rule, but he knows also that exposing the rule can mean changing the game. And the anomalous power of art is precisely this.

His work with money infact, originates from a larger itinerary that also plays upon hyper-technological instrumentation but is however directed towards the identity/alterity bond (nexus) ~ it assumes an almost paradigmatic aspect in Dollar Image (1), (1989-1992) where the icon of George Washington is projected onto a pane of ground glass. Within the slide a chemical solution, activated by the heat generated from the projector, slowly corrodes the paper substance inserted therein. //The exchange value of goods, in as much as a particular entity parallel to the goods// wrote Karl Marx in the Grundrisse, // is money; it is the form in which all goods are equivalent, are confronted, are measured; and that in which all goods are dissolved, that which is dissolved in all goods//. The work of Paolo Monti seems to be both the paraphrase and the literal reversal of Marx’s thesis. Money is not in fact assumed as a form or a means and, therefore, as a general equivalent, but as material subjected to a specific process of wasting: it dissolves not into goods but into itself. The abstract sign regresses into concrete, physical fact in present (temporaneous) consistency. Money is not an object naturally endowed with intrinsic value, its quality consists exclusively in its quantity. Monti materialises abstract value, the phantom; he reverses the process that leads to the exclusion of the goods assumed as money and therefore the general equivalent, bringing money back to its initial condition of material-object with its extreme residual value of use. In a given time, the banknote attacked by acids will dissolve, until there is no trace left. It is said that “Time is Money”. Here it is money that is time. Until total entropy is reached, until the final consummation. Until nothingness.

We are irreversibly, more or less contentedly, consigned to the imaginary. This occurs first of all concerning that which we consider most concrete, near, real, immediate: ourselves, our body, our countenance. According to constitutives of dis-symmetrical, somatic and psychic origin, we are able to catch our glance, our eyes, never directly but only with the orthopaedic aid of a mirror (the instrument of Narcissus, but also of Dionysus). Our countenance (traditionally the seat of our soul, of the psychè) is for us only an image; and the image is always of another, of the other. The only way to see ourselves is to see ourselves differently to how we “are” whilst we look at ourselves; we cannot but catch ourselves as different. There upon the mirror, upon this necessary and unfaithful prosthesis, we are only a mutable visual projection, ephemeral and revocable. We are a fragment of ourselves; we can see (and touch) our body only in fragments: between Narcissus and Dionysus, indeed. Or else we “see” ourselves through the glances of others: namely, when others desire us, they interpel us, they receive us in their field of perception: when others reduce us from subjects to objects. That the “object” is in reality a world, a horizon of sensibility that nevertheless brings to life an aesthetic experience, is another question. The fact remains that it is the Other that constitutes us; without forgetting obviously that we ourselves are others to the others. Any kind of proximity cannot originate without this distance. Even friendship, beyond the commonplace, is the heart of respected distance and treasured as such. The same intimate soliloquy of conscience has a dialogued movement: do we not perhaps “speak” to someone, namely to ourselves? One does not exist who is not (also) two. It is the intranscendable relational structure of the human experience.

All these things are well known. Here they are recalled in very synthetic terms only because they have something to do with (maybe more than that which might appear at first glance), the more sophisticatedly technological work of Paolo Monti. The themes are exactly those of the relationship between identity and alterity, between subject and object: with their reciprocal exchange and deviations within the cognitive labyrinths which bind them to one another. We can therefore make three examples of as many other works that complessively describe a temporal period of ten years, almost to confirm not only the coherence of a poetic and an operative route, but also the centrality of an obsession that has been so well utilised.

In Elastic Mirror (9), the spectator-observer in order to mirror her/himself in the circle of mercury, enters it by breaking into the cone of light beams that shine from above, striking the basin which contains the substance (mercury), thus provoking a decrease in the intensity of light, thereby activating the photo-sensors connected to a micro-oscillator that radiates vibrations. The result is that the image - one’s very own image- reflected in the mercury decomposes; it frantumates. I can see the surrounding environment in which I am wandering perfectly captured and restituted in the form of an image; but as soon as I enter to become part of it as a reflection, I disappear, I frantumate. The distinction that originates me ( I am because I am seen by another) is as if I “materially” enter, perceptibly within myself : and I fracture, I lacerate, I de-identify precisely in the moment that I look for my identity. And it cannot be otherwise. It is as if the very will to see oneself prejudicates the vision. One should be able to see oneself without having to look at oneself, in perfect Zen spirit, completely de-subjectivated: with a gesture of supreme carelessness, far removed from all intentionality, from every will of appropriation. Although representing a collateral semantic stratification in the work, it is evident that, given the materials utilised, it is possible to allow that which attains to mythical-alchemic nature to emerge within the analysis, that nevertheless ultimately leads to the identical interpretative results. Mercury, that is notedly of feminine nature, is the pater metallorum; and before the, more or less, symbolic figure of the Father, the self-identification or the conquest of an identity, is however the result of a work of endeavour, an effort. As such, it has its beginning and end in itself, like Ouroborus, the Serpent that self-fecundates then kills itself in order to regenerate. The basin containing the mercury is round (the Circle, figure of perfection) like the vas hermeticum that brings the aqua permanens in which the Alchemic Transformation takes place. In the case of Elastic Mirror, it is as if the mercury restitutes the primordial imago, the protocountenance or the archicountenance of mankind before the principium individuationis : images, therefore, narcisisstically fragmented, dionystically chaotic.

We can then take the example of Endofrottage (13), a work from 1991. On the surface of a wall, immediately under the plaster - therefore under the skin of an architectural body- thermoresistances of various shapes are placed therein. On approaching the wall, the observer -decodified as a caloric mass- is intercepted and picked up by photoelectric cells that activate the thermoresistances, which then come to light through their colours, epiphanically emerging upon the surface. As the observer moves away from the wall, these slowly disappear. A typical interactive practice, that is customary in the work of Paolo Monti: it is the spectator that makes the manifestation of the opera as such possible.

The key-role of the observer is well known (the surveyor, the scientist and, however cognitively, the subject) and has played a part in the development of modern-contemporary sciences and constructivist epistemology. A role that is no longer thought of as external in relation to the process of knowledge, but rather identified as profoundly integrating. That which the scientist therefore observes is not nature sic et simpliciter, but nature exposed, framed, trimmed according to the procedures and protocols of particular methods of investigation adopted in order to observe it. Measuring any perception is to already transform it : so as mirroring oneself in the basin of mercury signifies ipso facto transforming : signifies frantumating one’s own image (that cannot be seen other than by being frantumated); signifies losing ~ whilst looking for it ~ an identity (that cannot be perceived if not through the Other).

The most recent work in the itinerary of the artist, De-localisation (16), brings to life the same type of complex relations. When finally through the mathematicalisation of the incidence of light present in the environment my mirrored image appears, in its entirety, upon a black plane as the level of mercury slowly rises. The image that forms on the plane is transmitted by a micro-telecamera, in real time, to a monitor located in an attiguous space until nothing more appears: the Other that is in front of it sees me vanishing.

The observer appears on the black mirroring surface of the plane, translated into a body of light; metaphorically into an angel: and it is exactly at this point that it becomes invisible. When I see the Other, I cannot see myself : when I see myself, the Other cannot see me. I run away from myself only to let myself be captured by the Other; I reconquest myself but only to disappear from others. Not : I “am” always elsewhere; but : I art always elsewhere. After some time, the level of mercury lowers, clearing the field of vision for the telecamera that was previously submersed by the liquid metal, and starting from the top towards bottom, the image of the observer in front of the black plane slowly reappears on the monitor : like a phantom, a revenant, one who returns. Inversely, whoever was looking at her/himself in the mirror, gets lost. Until nothingness.
 

UNTIL NOTHINGNESS
by Massimo Carboni
in: PAOLO MONTI
MUSIS, 1998
ISBN 88-87054-01-0